


Mirror mirror on the wall (is any of us innocent at all)

by Matarreyes



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bobbi Morse (mentioned) - Freeform, Bobbi Morse deserved better than being given an Alexander Pierce rhetoric, Gen, Grant Ward deserved better than a character assassination, Kara Palamas (mentioned), Lance Hunter deserves better thank becoming an hypocrite, No characters were bashed in the writings of this fic, canon-typical despiction of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4896568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matarreyes/pseuds/Matarreyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance Hunter seeks revenge against Grant Ward for daring to seek revenge against Bobbi Morse. With a well thought out plan such as this, what could go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror mirror on the wall (is any of us innocent at all)

**Author's Note:**

> Note: without it being a major plot point, Bobbi has an alternative motivation for her non-apology in this. It actually makes her more likable IMO. However, if you think that she did nothing wrong on the show, this fic is not for you.

Lance could have said that it had been easy in the end, had he not spent the better part of 5 months losing sleep, time and energy on this little side project of his. And if SHIELD itself hadn't been spending substantial amounts of money on the same thing, so that Hunter only had to check the weirdest sightings and follow the most improbable hints. And if Bobbi hadn't told him time and again to drop the entire thing. How she knew, he couldn't imagine. He talked about his intentions to skin Grant Ward alive often and loud enough, but he never talked about the fact that he was actually looking for him in his free time. Bobbi found out anyway. She told him outright that he should drop it, that she would get over her injuries and move on with her life and that his time was better spent elsewhere (with her). But Hunter only had to see the scar on her chest, to notice the small frown on her lips as some fancy combat movement felt flat in the training room, to feel his blood boil. The worst were the times when she just stared at nothing with a vacant, somewhat sad expression. Injuries mended with the top notch care she received from SHIELD doctors. Fighting skills lost during convalescence came back. Scars faded. But that haunted look still crept on her from time to time. Never on a mission and never in the briefing room. Sometimes when the two of them were alone at night. Often, when Hunter told her how much he loved and admired and trusted her. 

So no, the truth was that it hadn't been easy, or quick, or effortless, but all woes were promptly forgotten the moment one of the most impossible leads had suddenly paid off. Ward had been sighted by a traffic camera of Nowhere Town, and after spending a weekend doing a stakeout, Hunter had been able to put a well aimed ICER round into the bastard's back. Five triumphant minutes later, the traitor was tied up with more zip ties than could be found at a Target at the beginning of a back to school action, and Hunter's truck was speeding down the interstate toward a nondescript safe house.

The setup he had prepared was simple and effective. The same one Bobbi had to endure, captive and alone with Ward and his psycho girlfriend, her poor delicate hands tied to the table and her spirit as indomitable as Hunter knew her to be in the face of drugs, pain and any other adversity. Grant Ward would not get the fancy drugs from him, though. Hunter would use the minimum amount of time and energy to show the bastard why he was there and to make him hurt, and then he'd kill him quickly and efficiently. Coulson's standing orders were to take him alive if at all possible. The official reason was that the comings and goings of Ward's little - but according to intel growing - group were proving completely incomprehensible for analysts at SHIELD, but everybody knew that the reality was much more prosaic. Everyone at the agency wanted to make him pay. Ward might have escaped their vault and their wrath once, but he consensus was that there wouldn't be another. Hunter doubted that May, or Bobbi, or even Coulson himself would disapprove of his actions once he was done with the traitor. Any SHIELD agent would breath easier once presented with Grant Ward's dead body. 

He waited out the time needed for the drug to leave the circulation and for the man to wake up. Sooner than expected, Ward lifted his head from the table with an open wince, which suited Hunter just fine. He wasn't in the mood to play spy games with the guy, with his captive pretending to still be dead to the world to gain time. 

"Wakey wakey, Sleeping Beauty."

Ward tested the ties that bound him to the table. His wrists had been secured separately and within a good distance in between to prevent him from doing his party trick and liberating himself. He blinked once and looked around the basement before finally acknowledging Hunter's presence and fixing him with a stare that was dark and clear, entirely unsurprised and even a little bit curious. 

They stared at each other for a second before Hunter remembered his main goal, going into this. The bastard had to know exactly what was going on, and why.

"I'm the guy who opened Bobbi Morse's door. The one she threw herself in front of your weapon for," he said darkly. "And I'm here to make you pay for what you did."

"I could tell you that you won't appraise your guilt over one bloodshed by orchestrating another, but I don't think you'll be happy to take my word for it," drawled the captive, which made the opening move all the easier. 

Ward's head snapped to the side with a satisfying snap, and Hunter's knuckles begun to burn with a hot prickling sensation. He opened and closed his fist a couple of times, reworking his circulation. He'd been waiting so very long for this, the itch to let loose was overwhelming. 

The man righted himself right back. "Are you sure you have what it takes to see this through? You can still walk away, you know," he said almost conversationally before Hunter punched him again, and then once more. 

"I really, really don't think I will. I'm gonna be very happy for freeing the world of a deranged, sadistic, revenge-driven bastard."

Each expletive had been punctuated with a blow, and when he run out of words, deeds to make his feelings known. Several times, had to pause and haul the man bodily back up into a sitting position. Droplets of blood were now decorating the table. Ward's teeth were red and his lips broken, and yet the expression he wore was still the same - dark and solemn, with no hint of fear or remorse. He also hadn't been moving a muscle to evade or shield himself from the blows, and hardly even blinked when the fist connected with face.

"This isn't going to work any better for you than it did for us," he said again with the same reasonable inflection. "You should have just shot me swiftly and been done with it. Though I can't say that I'm not grateful for the reprieve."

The blows had mottled his face and split his skin with a long gashes that were bleeding sluggishly, but Ward's face still held no real emotion. It was an uncanny combination - his eyes were intense, clear and passionate, and yet nothing identifiable could be read from them. All the instances of Coulson and May calling him a psycho came to mind. Hunter didn't have enough background info to either agree or disagree with them, but he did notice when a person felt off, and Ward definitely qualified. He wasn't afraid, contrite, cocky, not even visibly in pain. Indifferent was the adjective that applied best, as if this were a scenario he'd already been through and that would replay itself a thousand times yet, and no outcome could trouble him.

"You have nothing to be grateful for, you deranged son of a bitch. Your delusional girlfriend is dead, and you're soon to follow."

"Kara and I had no secrets from each other, till the end. Can you say the same about yourself and Morse?"

"You think this is funny? You think it's a game and you're winning some kind of high moral ground, forcing me to resort to this to make you understand what you did to her? To us?"

Ward's perfectly calm demeanor was unnerving and maddening, truth be told. Even now, his hands were lying, relaxed and unmoving, on the table where Hunter had tied them. It was of no use to Hunter, to kill a man who behaved like that and looked at him so vehemently. The man had to be made understand, to be made sorry and afraid, before he went. 

A blow got rid of the chair Ward had been sitting on and a kick to his kneecap left him kneeling on the floor, hands still secured to the table. Hunter sent several more kicks to his ribcage to ensure the captive stayed down, and pointed the cocked gun in his direction. It felt good. Satisfying in a basal, primitive way. Bobbi still had nightmares. And that haunted look every time he brought up her ordeal... He'd never forgive the man for putting it on her open, smiling face. 

His finger moved before his head had the opportunity to think better about it. A worthy retribution, an eye for an eye, and didn't the entire SHIELD live by that motto since the Hydra uprising anyway, despite all its lipservice about protection? 

The bullet shattered Ward's left wrist. The red drops already scattered all over the table got absorbed into an expanding bloody puddle. Hunter didn't waste time looking down, at the result of his work, and just moved the barrel to the other wrist. His eyes were glued to these of his prisoner.

"Say that you're sorry, and then it'll be over," he snarled and cocked the gun again, only to be greeted with another maddeningly solemn, judging stare from the kneeling man. "Damn it! You truly are a psychopath. Do you even feel anything at all? Fear, pain, cold, remorse?"

A clear ding dong sound pierced the air of the dank basement, and Hunter stilled. It was an unknown sound, but generic enough to know its meaning. He crossed the place to where he'd piled the entire arsenal Ward had had on him. Two short firearms, two knifes, a garrote, some keys, a wallet with several fake IDs and a nondescript smartphone.

The screen was lit up with a laconic incoming message: "As requested, boss." An attached file was being downloaded into the system as Hunter looked on.

Lance hummed to himself. Smartphones were easily hackable and traceable, even he knew that. For Ward to use one of these was a big oversight, and he really should have contacted SHIELD right away to make the most of the opportunity. The practicality calmed his rage somewhat. Hunter even a bit felt relieved at having an excuse to put an end to the bloody spectacle.

He cocked the gun and aimed at the traitor's head. He had done his share of killings in his time as a mercenary, but it was the first time he was preparing to act out an execution. It was for Bobbi, more justified than most of his past money-driven exploits, but still there was something to be said against pulling the trigger on a bounded prisoner. 

Even this gesture got no outward reaction. Ward's eyes bore into his, dark and knowing. It suddenly occurred to Hunter that while it wasn't the look of a perfectly stable man, it wasn't the look of an unhinged madman, either. More like the look of someone who'd seen more than he could bear more times than he could count, and had a part of himself ripped out of his chest and transformed into something different. Acceptance instead of hope. Stone instead of flesh. Thinking about it made Hunter distinctly uncomfortable. He was increasingly happy that this was almost over. 

"Any last requests?" 

"Out of morbid curiosity... Care to show me what have my subordinates been up to while I've been preparing to die?"

Who would have told that Grant Ward did have a sense of humor. Hunter slid his finger over the screen, pausing and making a double check as soon as the video started playing in front of him. For a second, he wondered if he'd been made by Hydra and sent the surveillance file of his own basement, so similar was the setup in front of him to the procedures unfolding on screen. There was a dark interrogation room surrounded by concrete walls, a bloodied prisoner shackled to the table and an interrogator. The prisoner was a young man, curly haired and probably highly myopic, blinking up to the slim brunette wearing the stylish red coat of the Hydra security forces and holding a gun to his head. He was crying, pleading and promising, while snot and blood and tears run down his ruined, terrified face. When the brunette cocked her sidearm, he started to whimper - a hoarse, pathetic sound that was cut short by a gunshot. In the silence that followed, the woman turned around and faced Sunil Bakshi, who had appeared in the room behind her. 

"This was more than adequate, thank you. We will improve your position with us accordingly, specially since the safe house you've informed on yielded... shall we say interesting results. Agent 33 is no SHIELD technician, she will put your interrogation skills to good use."

"As you wish. Hail Hydra!" 

Bobbi Morse holstered her gun and left the room, her beautiful face perfectly calm. And the thing was, Hunter knew how much she was hurting inside. He knew it without a single doubt. And he was trying to see it - see it in her eyes, in her posture, in her breathing pattern, in her entire being. He wanted to be able to point it out, to show it to others - to Ward, to Bakshi, to Bobbi herself, to SHIELD - but it simply wasn't there. She didn't drop the gun, didn't break down, didn't whisper that she was sorry. Her facade was perfect, as convincing as the corpse she had left behind.

Lance doubled over, feeling soul sick. He had suspected. He had feared what the price of being one of the best spies around, of surviving, of completing the mission would prove to be. And now, he knew.

He only had enough time to realize that Ward's uninjured hand was suddenly free and working to extract his broken left hand from the binds, before barrel of a gun was pressed against his temple. Swift hands relieved him of his weapons. 

"You set me up," said Hunter blankly as a dark skinned guy with a scar over half his face - one of Ward's known minions - proceeded to drag him to the table Ward had just vacated and tie him up. The mercenary had chosen the setup because he had wanted it to remind the traitor of his torture of Bobbi. Now he understood that Ward had had Agent 33's own torture sessions to be inspired by.

"You've been hell bent on feeding me to wild animals one limb at a time. Of course I set you up. Did you expect me to put up with your misguided righteousness forever?"

"I don't care that this makes me as much a monster as you. I did it for Bobbi, not for myself."

"Bobbi went through torture rather than admit to something all present knew to be true. I thought she was just that callous, but it wasn't that. She was just more afraid of you finding out the dark truth about her, and would rather die than allow you to know. And now, the truth is out."

"So this trap is once again about you trying to punish her through me?" 

And how much he hated that. How stupid he'd been. He'd wanted to help Bobbi dispel the dark clouds that surrounded her after her abduction, but he only ended making everything worse. 

"Believe it or not, I really wish I'd figured her out sooner. I happen to know a thing or two about hiding dark truths from loved ones. It would have been enough, then. As for now, I gave you as much time to bow out of your revenge obsession as I could, before recurring to the video... I do need to have at least one working hand at any given time, you know. On that note, Kebo, please get rid of that phone after alerting SHIELD to our friend's situation. They would find a way to spin even that evidence as an evil defamation against one of their best, and it works better on a personal level anyway."

"You aren't going to kill me?" Asked Hunter in dismay, finally coming to believe that he would have a chance.

Bobbi would undoubtedly be there soon. He didn't want to think about what would happen next. He wouldn't - couldn't - stop loving her, that much he knew. And he had just received some extremely oblique proof of how much Bobbi loved him in return. Whether he confronted Bobbi or pretended he didn't see the recording was also irrelevant - the revelations of this day would weight on him heavily anyway. Deep down, he understood her choice, and he understood that didn't have any right to judge her. That he had been about to do the same thing she had done, for much more selfish reasons. But the future together that he had begun imagining would never be as simple as he'd wished, and he'd never be able to look at Bobbi or himself the same. 

"What purpose would that entail? I fully expect you to refrain from further righteous vengeance attempts... Unlike some of your colleagues, you are not quite without self awareness."

"The entirety of SHIELD will still be out to get you. The team will never stop hunting you, even if I tell them the whole truth about what went down here today."

Ward's eyes lit up with something unnameable - a fire even darker than the usual blackness of his gaze.

"Of course they won't, they do so earnestly believe that they are the heroes of a modern fairy tale. They are welcome to come for me - I have many more dark versions of SHIELD's favorite bedtime stories." 

"The Evil Queen Diaries?" Quipped Hunter. It came out cocky enough, but did not manage to completely hide the fact that he now had goosebumps on his arms. He almost wished he'd just let Ward walk through the door.

"The original tale described how Snow White made her put on a pair of glowing-hot iron shoes and dance in them at her coronation, did you know that?" The man asked very seriously. "Just imagine how it would have looked in that Disney movie, her on her throne as her stepmother danced until she dropped dead. Most people would probably worry that her reign wouldn't be a very happy one. After all, every villain is the hero of his own story."

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: yes, that is the original ending of the Snow White fairytale (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White).


End file.
